Gale Face

The Butterfield guidebook warns us to be careful getting to the first bolt. After climbing a bunch of easy ground one will be sufficiently high enough to hurt oneself permanently if they were to fall while performing the mandatory 5.9ish move to get the first bolt clipped. This might be a good time for the ol locking carabiner on the first bolt trick. Ed Webster bolted this route on lead. He is definitely The Man! Make thin, technical and committing moves past a drilled piton and another bolt to some much better holds in a suspect flake and go up. Get a bit of a rest, move right into a sea of smooth Feldspar Granite, gain a right angling corner (left wall overhanging) and make committing yet more moderate moves thru the corner making sure to look around for some key footholds. Another interesting flake, the one the gear lives in, allows one to mantle onto the upper slab. Hopefully the aspirant clipped all of the gear long up to this point because the saga has merely begun. Set sail and get situated beneath the crux finger crack splitting the steep swell of Maniacal Depression. A committing high step gains a solid, bucketous, lock. " Arrrr batten down the hatches matie," cuz its about to get hard! This is one of the few routes I've been on that goes from slab to vertical to overhanging and back to vertical in 15 feet. Find the sequence thru the series of shallow pods and jams as you walk the plank hanging your butt way out there laybacking the apex of this mounting swell. Get a stance, place some gear in the shin region, and surge up the last sequence. Try not to become Earth's largest land mammal, (The Beached Whale) mantling above small gear with the weight of the rope threatening to pull you out to sea. This is a much better way to access the upper crux of Maniacal Deprerssion.

Next to Standard Route.

single rack of cams up to .75, a few doubles in the small fingers realm, nuts, and lots of extendo draws. Quickdraws need not apply. Bolt anchor.